Tent Name: Red World
Led by: Shaun Button
Tent Schedule: Weekly
Project Purpose: A spirit group for those called to engage in mystery. A mystical container for mutual support and creation based on our collective experiences. A right-brained, embodied, gathering around a campfire vibe.
Tent Activities:
Any specific time? (Random words inserted here to meet minimum word quota on post replies).
At the Tuesday Oasis call during the breakouts. It may become a separate meeting in the future.
I also want to share my inspirations for the tent.
First, is my journey and the Red World Blue World framework I outlined here: My journey from the Blue World to the Red World. I want to build something that would have helped my past self.
Second, was my experience of a powerful dream that left me with a spiritual weight the next day. I was tired, had a headache and couldn’t focus. I needed help with integration. Thankfully, @Naeema was open to hearing about it and helped me understand the message. Part of the dream was making room for others on this rainbow road. Therefore, a big part of this is to find the others so we can travel together.
Third, was inspiration from the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The story focuses on two groups: a group of scientist following strange artifacts and occurrences, and individuals who had direct experiences with UFOs. The scientist collect data, analyze maps and develop theories, while the main character loses his job, cries in the shower and struggles to recreate the sounds and images of his dreams. The two eventually converge and successfully engage with the aliens. I see this as a model for the Red World group working with the research group. Different paths to the dame destination.
@SilentShaun below is a selection from a larger piece I am working on. This section just got written a couple hours ago. I’m wondering to what extent you see a fit with any of these ideas and your proposed Red World Tent.
The Spiritual “Pull”
This section stands out for its slender connection to Western natural science. It does traffic in historical empiricism, however. Its empirical method draws from the particular philosophical strands of phenomenology, including Husserl, Heidegger, the later Wittgenstein, and Tillich.For more current metamodern references, see everything John Vervaeke says about participatory knowing. Or what Iain McGilchrist claims are the right-brain’s preferred modes of knowing and perceiving. Anyone strongly left-brained dominant will find much to object to in this section. Despite any such objection, my phenomenological approach can be illustrated, for example, by the Biblical story of Saul on the Road to Damascus. In later writings, Saul (now renamed Paul) reported being struck blind on the road by a lumenous vision of the Risen Christ. That report, as a report, is a historical fact. As to what really happened on that road, or if the whole story is inspired fiction, or if it’s all just a Jungian archetype, or (pick any interpretation you prefer) is not the problem I am trying to solve here. I’m not demanding the reader believe in anything “woo”. What I am requesting is that the reader acknowledge, as a matter of historical empiricism, that divine apparitions in dreams, visions, portents, ecstatic practices, and miraculous events were assumed to be quite woven into the fabric of reality by most humans at most times, prior to the relatively recent modern period. My query is simply, what do we make of all that? And most pressingly, does any of it apply to us?
@RobertBunge this is a dense but gentle nudge from the blue to the red. Is the idea to dive into the many great thinkers/ideas you mention?
I’m guessing the rest of the writing is rather rational and scientific and this is a way of dropping into the mystical. I’m more inclined to dive right in, make the case for the Master over the Emissary, trash Descartes, demand they incorporate woo. That’s not likely to fit for you but your readers may need a little more push towards the edge.
This makes me think of your “What do you love?” question. In Saul’s context, this becomes “What are you called to do”. This is the Red World version of what you love. The left brain may have a difficult time identifying what it loves. It would land on isolated things or activities - video games or the dog. Whereas, the right brain can see the full context but can only illustrate its vision in divine apparitions. Saul’s transformation is met without hesitation, but such revelations are likely to be feared or rejected by the left hemisphere (see the anti-hero and resistance to the call to adventure). It’s this resistance that makes me lean towards a strong push into the woo.
Here’s the final section of the same paper, to set some context:
"G. Action Models
Now for the question whose urgency motivates all the prior sections: “what are we to do?” My plan here is to map out a variety of options suggested by the cultural-materialist sections 1-5 above. The actual decision process for any given person - the commitment of energy, attention, time, resources, or even life itself can only follow inspiration that for lack of a better term I would characterize as “spiritual”. Section 6 above explores how humans past thematized their spiritual understandings. How any given person today characterizes the action of spirit on a personal level is a matter for each person to share (or not) and for others to attend to, ideally with full respect and dignity accorded to the mystery of each profound and unrepeatable human person. "
You are correct, the bulk of the paper (sections 1-5) is scientific and analytical. However, the main goal is action planning, and what I’ve learned about action decision making is there is a necessary transrational synthesis or “leap of faith” required to get beyond analysis and spring into embodied action. We can use science and data gathering all day long to weigh alternatives. But when it comes time to jump in - we can only just jump in!
So yes, section 6 is nudge in the direction of getting rationalists to consider that reason alone can never show us the way. (A fortiori, AI alone can never show us the way). Those camped out in the Red Tent already don’t really need this analysis. But I wanted to show the organic fit between “what does one love” and “what does the world need”. These and other questions must all snap together for effective action.